Do Elephants Jump?

by David Feldman

  The IHO issues a publication, “Limits of Oceans and Seas,” that determines exactly where these water borders are located, but is used more by researchers than sailors. Michel Huet, chief engineer at the International Hydrographic Bureau, the central office of the IHO, wrote to Imponderables and quoted “Limits of Oceans and Seas”:

  “The limits proposed…have been drawn up solely for the convenience of National Hydrographic Offices when compiling their Sailing Directions, Notices to Mariners, etc., so as to ensure that all such publications headed with the name of an ocean or sea will deal with the same area, and they are not to be regarded as representing the result of full geographic study; the bathymetric [depth measurements of the ocean floor] results of various oceanographic expeditions have, however, been taken into consideration so far as possible, and it is therefore hoped that these delimitations will also prove acceptable to oceanographers. These limits have no political significance whatsoever.” Therefore, the boundaries are established by common usage and technical considerations as agreed to by the Member States of the IHO.

  Essentially, a committee of maritime nations determines the borders and titles for the oceans.

  How would the IHO decide on the border between the Atlantic and Pacific? A somewhat arbitrary man-drawn line was agreed upon that extends from Cape Horn, on the southern tip of South America, across the Drake Passage to Antarctica. A specific longitude was chosen, so the border goes exactly north-south from the cape to Antarctica.

  Of course, there are no YOU ARE LEAVING THE PACIFIC OCEAN, WELCOME TO THE ATLANTIC OCEAN signs posted along the longitude. But a sailor with decent navigational equipment could determine which ocean he was in — likewise with the boundaries between other oceans.

  Unlike the United Nations, most of the time the IHO does not become embroiled in political disputes, presumably because the precise location of the oceans’ borders has no commercial or military implications. Disputes are not unheard of, though. For example, Korea and Japan recently tussled about the designation of the sea that divides their countries. Traditionally, the body of water has been called the Sea of Japan, but Korea wanted it changed to “East Sea.”

  Perhaps we were dozing during some of the year 2000 hoopla, but much to our surprise, the IHO was involved with a rather important event in that year — the debut of a new ocean. The southernmost parts of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans (including all the water surrounding Antarctica), up to 60 degrees south, were dubbed the “Southern Ocean.” The name was approved by a majority of the IHO and went into effect in 1999, with Australia among the dissenters. Why wasn’t this a bigger deal than Y2K?

  Submitted by Bonnie Wootten of Nanaimo, British Columbia.

  Thanks also to Terry Garland, via the Internet.

  Why Do Priests Wear Black?

  Imponderables readers are asserting their spiritual side. At least you seem to be curious about superficial questions about Catholic priests and the clothes they wear, and that’s good enough for us. Most readers assume that every vestment was adopted for its symbolic meaning, but in reality many of the clothes priests wear reflect the everyday dress of nonreligious folks nearly two millennia ago.

  As John Dollison, author of the whimsical but solidly researched book Pope-Pourri, put it:

  Because they believed the second coming of Christ was imminent, [early Christians] didn’t bother to formalize many aspects of their new religion. Clerical dress was no exception — nobody gave any thought to what priests should wear during Mass; they just wore the same clothes that laypeople did….

  Fashions changed over time, but the priests didn’t. They stuck with the same clothes they had always worn…until their garments became so different from what everyone else was wearing that they were associated exclusively with religious life.

  Not until the sixth century did the Church start to codify the dress of priests, and mandate that special garb be worn outside of the sanctuary. Even if most Catholics have no idea of the reasons for the uniforms, Dr. Brian Butler, of the U.S. Catholic Historical Society, feels: “The Church wants priests to be recognized easily by the laity. This is in the interest of both parties.” You’re unlikely to see priests in pastels soon.

  Some priests started wearing black vestments in the early days of Christianity, as Father Kevin Vaillancourt, of the Society of Traditional Roman Catholics, explains:

  The practice of priests’ wearing black originated in Rome centuries ago. Since the priesthood involves a renunciation of pleasures that the laity can practice, black was worn as a symbol of death — death to these desires, and death to slavish attachment to the fashions of the world. They were to concentrate solely on the service to God and others.

  But by no means was there uniformity among priests in their garb until much later. Professor Marie Anne Mayeski, of the theology department of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, points out that no specific color was required until after the Council of Trent (1545–1563), and that a response to the Reformation might have been partly responsible for the codification of clerical garb:

  Perhaps Catholic and Anglican clerics did not want to appear less sober and upright than their Puritan challengers.

  There are exceptions to the generalization that priests wear black vestments. Higher-ranking priests put a little color in their garb. Cardinals’ cassocks feature scarlet buttons, trim, and inside hems; bishops and other higher officials don amaranth; and chaplains to the Pope wear purple trim. During liturgical ceremonies, the cardinals wear all-scarlet cassocks, bishops wear purple, while parish priests wear black, although there are even exceptions here — a few dioceses, especially in warm-weather areas such as South America and Africa, allow priests to wear white cassocks, with trim indicating their rank.

  Submitted by Doug Ebert, of San Bruno, California. Thanks also to Keith Cooper of Brooklyn, New York; Douglas Watkins Jr. of Hayward, California; and Tony Dreyer and William Morales Jr. of parts unknown.

  Since Priests Wear Black, Why Does the Pope Wear White?

  Blame it on Pius V, who assumed the papacy from 1566 until his death in 1572. For centuries before that, popes wore red. Why the change? Reverend Monsignor Dr. Alan F. Detscher, executive director of the Secretariat for the Liturgy, explains:

  Religious men who became bishops wore a cassock in the same color as the habit worn by their religious community. Pius V, being a [member of the] Dominican order, continued the practice of using the color of his religious habit, even after he was elected pope. The practice of the pope wearing white continued on after his papacy. On some occasions, the pope will wear a red cape over his white cassock, this a reminder that the more ancient papal color was not white, but red.

  Like other religious traditions, what might have started as a personal predilection became codified to the point where now there are elaborate agreements about color codes — you’d think we were talking about battling VH-1 Divas who feared clashing outfits. For example, when the queen of England visits the Vatican, she wears black, as she is technically representing the Protestant Anglican church. But when the Pope visits her at Buckingham Palace, she can wear chartreuse if that’s what she fancies.

  Submitted by a caller on the Jim Eason Show , KGO-AM, San Francisco, California.

  Why Does the Pope Wear a White Skullcap, and When Did This Custom Begin? How Does He Keep It Fastened? And Why at Other Times Does He Wear a Double-Pointed Hat?

  We have our old friend Pope Pius V to “blame” for the pope wearing white, but he did not originate the use of the skullcap, properly called a zucchetto. Its use goes back to at least the thirteenth century. The zucchetto resembles the Jewish skullcap, the yarmulke, but its original purpose was quite different.

  In the Middle Ages, when Catholic priests embraced celibacy, a ring of hair was removed from the top of their head, the tonsure. Churches and monasteries of this era weren’t renowned for their creature comforts — the purpose of the zucchetto was to cover the “bald spot” in order f
or these often elderly men to retain heat in cold, drafty conditions. A cap that was sometimes used by clerics in the same era, the camauro, covered the ears and the whole back of the head, and was even more effective in staving off the cold. The tonsure was eliminated after the Second Vatican Council, but the headgear has lived on.

  At no point has the zucchetto been worn exclusively by the pope, but since a proclamation by Pope Paul VI in 1968, only members of the hierarchy are required to wear the skullcap. You can tell the rank of a cleric without a scorecard — the color of the zucchetto is a tip-off.

  Only the pope may wear white, with the exception of orders whose habits are white, such as the Norbertines and Dominicans. Once again, Pope Pius V claimed the white color in honor of his Dominican order. Cardinals wear red zucchettos. Patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops sport a violetlike amaranth red zucchetto, and the “lower” deacons and priests wear black, although few priests wear zucchettos anymore.

  How do clerics fasten the zucchetto on their heads? Evidently with some difficulty. According to Reverend Monsignor Dr. Alan F. Detscher,

  The zucchetto is not fastened on, but merely is set on the back of the head. It can fall off with movement and sometimes has to be adjusted in order to keep it in place.

  The mitre, the double-pointed hat that the pope wears during ceremonial proceedings, is even older than the zucchetto — dating back to the tenth century — and can be worn by bishops and cardinals, as well as the pope. The hat features two cone-shaped peaks, divided by a piece of material that can fold together.

  The mitre has undergone so many transformations in form that it is hardly recognizable as the original, simple cone-shaped hat that was worn by laypeople in Rome. At one point in the twelfth century, the mitre was shaped with the two points on the end, with a “valley” in between. But as John Dollison, author of Pope-Pourri notes, this created a problem:

  The points reminded people so much of the devil that they became known as horns…so the popes rotated their hats ninety degrees. They’ve worn them that way ever since.

  Submitted by Peter Geran of Bethesda, Maryland. Thanks also to Jennifer Gaeth of Decatur, Illinois; and David Forsyth of Denver, Colorado.

  Why Is There No Light in the Freezer Compartment?

  This is a mystery dear to the hearts of Imponderables readers, and, we admit, to ours, too. Many is the time when we have pranced into the kitchen around midnight, opened the freezer, and ever mindful of the importance of nutrition, contemplate choosing a Ben & Jerry’s dessert based on which contained the most calcium. If we had sufficient reading light before we took the stuff out of the freezer to know that one half-cup of the Chocolate Fudge Brownie frozen yogurt contained 20 percent of our daily calcium requirement, it might not have been necessary to eat ten half-cups of Cherry Garcia to make sure our calcium needs were met.

  We posed this Imponderable to marketing and engineering types in the appliance industry, and their answers surprised us a bit. We assumed that a lightbulb would affect a freezer’s ability to keep the freezer area cold enough, but since users rarely keep a freezer door open for long, the experts assured us that the energy usage involved in installing a light in the freezer would be negligible.

  One of our sources, consulting engineer J. Benjamin Horvay, former chairman of the technical committee of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, suggests that not everyone is obsessed with reading nutritional panels in the dark as we are:

  It is a question of cost and the consumer’s perception of value. For the most popular refrigerator configuration, the one with the freezer compartment on the top, the rationale is that because of its location, the freezer is more apt to be illuminated by the kitchen light than the fresh food compartment.

  Another factor is the relatively infrequent use of the freezer. Studies indicate that the typical customer opens the freezer door only once for every four fresh-food door openings.

  Since we first received this Imponderable, more than a decade ago, lights in freezers have begun to appear more often. Perhaps the growing popularity of the side-by-side refrigerator-freezer, with more space devoted to the freezer, might account for some of the rise of the illuminated freezer compartment.

  All the experts we consulted mentioned cost as the main obstacle to installing lights in freezers. Dick Stilwill, of the National Appliance Parts Suppliers Association, notes that lights tend to appear in high-end models; lower-priced models will lack a door switch, wiring harness, socket, and bulb:

  The consumer determines what features they are willing to pay for, and hence the various models in a line will go from high to low price-wise as the features decrease.

  Product planners at the big appliance manufacturers decide which models will carry which features. Not unlike automobiles, appliance manufacturers can sometimes sell a refrigerator for much more money by spending only a little on “high-end” features. But as Ron Anderson, manager of advanced engineering in refrigeration at Amana told us, there are also expenses involved in bringing out a multitude of different models with only a few features differentiating them. Anderson says that the product planners will do an analysis of what competitors are offering at various price points; freezer lights would rarely be the make-or-break feature to a purchaser.

  Still, the smaller manufacturers have to watch what the market leaders are offering. If volume leader General Electric, for example, offers lights in the freezers of its mid-priced refrigerators, the smaller players would have to consider offering them, too, or risk being at a competitive disadvantage.

  Anderson mentioned Kano Analysis, a method of evaluating what is important to consumers, as a tool for evaluating the importance of features such as freezer lights. Developed by a Japanese engineer, Nariaki Kano, Kano Analysis argues that some features of a product (or service) satisfy customers in ways disproportionate to its functionality or cost to manufacture. The lowest and most basic level of quality to a consumer is a “dissatisfier.” This is an attribute of a product that is so fundamental to the consumer that if it functions well, the customer doesn’t necessarily feel any satisfaction. For example, it’s unlikely that someone will rave about her refrigerator because “None of my food has been spoiled.” Keeping the contents of the refrigerator cool is a basic attribute; if it doesn’t perform, the consumer will be livid, but if it does perform adequately, it evokes no emotional response in the customer. The only emotion that a basic-level attribute is likely to generate will be negative — if the dissatisfier isn’t met satisfactorily.

  The second level in Kano Analysis involves “satisfiers,” performance attributes that please the customer if fulfilled, and disappoint when not present. If a customer feels that the shelving in a refrigerator does not help keep food organized better than his last refrigerator, he might be dissatisfied; one that allows him to find his food more easily will satisfy him. It makes sense for manufacturers to focus on “satisfiers,” as satisfiers often provide the basis for meaningful contrasts between products. All the performance attributes that auto manufacturers stress in trade magazines fall into this category.

  But surprisingly, Kano found that a third level, which he called “delighters,” can be crucial to the success of a product or service. These are attributes or features that are not essential to high quality and consumers don’t even consciously think they want. But they provide the consumer with a sense of delight, especially because these are features that the customer didn’t expect.

  When folks explain why they appreciate an appliance, an automobile, or a meal at a restaurant, they tend to focus on “satisfiers,” but Kano points out that “delighters” have a disproportionate effect on consumers’ satisfaction levels, even when the cost is minimal to the business offering them. For example, the consumer might cite high fuel mileage as the reason for appreciating his new car, when he is secretly delighted by the vehicle’s cup holders, which are big enough to carry a Big Gulp cup from 7-Eleven, or by the push buttons on
the stereo system. The restaurant patron might cite the succulence of the sirloin when praising a restaurant, when he was really wooed by the waitress bringing an extra portion of home-fried potatoes, gratis.

  Can a light in the freezer really delight a patron? If you itemized the options in a refrigerator-freezer, few customers would likely spring an extra fifty dollars for a bare lightbulb, but is one lightbulb enough to swing a decision in purchasing a thousand-dollar item? This is the kind of question that product planners at Maytag and GE must contemplate.

  Submitted by Thomas Ciampaglia of Hackensack, New Jersey.

  Thanks also to Richie Edgar of Delmont, Pennsylvania; Barry Davis of Brooklyn, New York; Kristi Lingen, Nicole Fusaro, and Nick Tabia of Commack, New York; Bill Jelen of Akron, Ohio; Mike Rude of Irma, Wisconsin; Matt Savener of Wymore, Nebraska; Sarah Bresler of Bloomdale, Ohio; and Joseph Grabko of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and many others.

  Why Don’t Most Ovens and Refrigerators Have Thermometers?

  As with the last Imponderable, money rears its ugly head. Most of us have plebeian controls on our appliances. Our ovens have temperature dials, of course, and when the oven reaches its appointed degree of heat, the oven clicks, or a light goes off. Our refrigerators have temperature controls, but they read from one to ten rather than in degrees.